Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 12:00 - 1:30 PM, at the Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C.

The U.S. military in Afghanistan has been trying to follow best practice counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine since spring 2007. The theory is that if counterinsurgents deliver security and connect Afghans to their government, the population will deny support to the insurgents. The assumption is that the population's perception of the government and insurgency determines success, not body counts or capturing terrain. Our soldiers have been living in small combat outposts, patrolling on foot and at night, meeting with Afghan elders to learn their concerns and needs, and delivering public works projects in many areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan, yet security continues to deteriorate. Stepping back from Afghanistan, it is not clear COIN has worked in any conflict where the population did not support their government. Can it work in Afghanistan?

Please join Hudson Institute for a discussion featuring Visiting Fellow Ann Marlowe, who travels frequently to Afghanistan, reporting on the American counterinsurgency there as well as Afghanistan's economy, culture, and archeology. She completed her second embed in Zabul Province and her sixth overall in late April. Marlowe will discuss the merits and failures of a COIN strategy in Afghanistan on both practical and theoretic grounds.

Joining Marlowe will be Conrad Crane, Director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute of the Army War College. He was the lead author for the 2006 Army and Marine Corps Field Manual that embodies current American COIN doctrine. The discussion will be moderated by Hudson Institute Senior Vice President S. Enders Wimbush, and will be streamed live on Hudson's website.

Lunch will be served.

To RSVP, please email events@hudson.org with "Afghanistan" in the subject line.

Betsy and Walter Stern Conference Center

Hudson Institute

1015 15th St, NW

6th Floor

Washington, DC 20005

www.hudson.org

Gen. David Petraeus, the commander viewed by some in Washington as the man who single-handedly turned around the Iraq war, will be taking on a bigger challenge than the one he confronted at the dawn of the Iraq surge in 2007. He'll be in charge of a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy in Afghanistan that's just getting under way, much as he was in Iraq. But he's starting almost nine years into this current war, rather than three years in as he did in Iraq. That means he faces more entrenched power players. Historically, the longer an army takes to shift to counterinsurgency strategy, the lower the odds are of success, as a study found last year. And sustaining the Afghanistan war -- now costing over $70 billion a year -- is taking its toll on American and Afghan public support...

General McChrystal boasted of success ahead of an operation in the town of Marjah, but afterward struggled to deliver the kind of governance needed to prevent the Taliban from coming back. Before McChrystal's ouster, war-planners indefinitely postponed a major offensive due to start this month in the southern province of Kandahar in order to rethink their approach. Meanwhile, the country remains as violent as ever. With six days left in the month, June 2010 is already officially the deadliest for foreign troops in Afghanistan since the war began, with 79 casualties. With Petraeus expected to sail through congressional confirmation hearings early next week, what are some of the key challenges he will face when he takes charge in Kabul? ...

More at The Christian Science Monitor.

Jules Crittenden remembers when:

... Rolling Stone thought counterinsurgency was cool, as opposed to something that needed to be patronized and blown up? Set the wayback to May 2009, when Rolling Stone deemed Small Wars and Lady Gaga both HOT...

Jules continues:

Unsurprising, mildly interesting, and irrelevant. Trusting Rolling Stone in the first place was a bad idea. The kind of unguarded comments and behavior as depicted in front of a Rolling Stone writer were a bad idea. What did they think he was going to do with it?

And adds an adversaries take to boot:

"We are enjoying every minute of it on TV and the radio," says a senior Afghan Taliban official and former cabinet minister in Mullah Mohammed Omar's defunct government, who spoke on the condition that he not be quoted by name. "All the talk about this being America's longest, most expensive, and most unpopular war - and about the tension between McChrystal and Obama - is music to our ears."

And as for Hastings and his editors in regards to their "fact-checking" questions - "whoa Nelly" - from The Washington Post:

Rolling Stone magazine sent an aide to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal a list of 30 questions to check facts in a profile of the commander. The questions contained no hint of what became the controversial portions of the story.

The magazine's executive editor, Eric Bates, denied that Michael Hastings, the author of the story, violated any ground rules in writing about the four weeks he spent with McChrystal and his team.

Damn, just damn at The Washington Post.

Update: But wait, there is more at The Washington Post:

"There's a Rolling Stone article out," the aide told McChrystal. "It's very, very bad."

Forty hours later, McChrystal had been relieved of his command, his 34-year military career in tatters. Apart from a terse apology, McChrystal has not discussed publicly the disparaging remarks that he and his aides made about administration officials and that appeared in the article.

On Friday, however, officials close to McChrystal began trying to salvage his reputation by asserting that the author, Michael Hastings, quoted the general and his staff in conversations that he was allowed to witness but not report. The officials also challenged a statement by Rolling Stone's executive editor that the magazine had thoroughly reviewed the story with McChrystal's staff ahead of publication...

More here.

Last note from Jules:

... Yeah, well, that was then. Gotcha on a Small Warrior, turning a Small War on its ear, getting the president to dance to your tune, being the talk of the Taliban. That's HOT in 2010.

According to U.S. military doctrine, in order to defeat an insurgency like the one in Afghanistan, commanders must engage with the news media to win the hearts and minds of both the local population and the American public. But in the wake of the firing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal as Afghan commander over intemperate remarks to Rolling Stone magazine, Pentagon officials are concerned the military may recoil in fear and anger from the press.

The chill couldn't come at a more inopportune time for the Pentagon's leadership, with skepticism about the war's progress growing among U.S. politicians and officials in Afghanistan ahead of what is likely to be the war's most important operation, the imminent move by thousands of U.S. forces into Kandahar, the spiritual heartland of the Taliban. "If we recoil, if we go underground, if we get defensive, it's self-defeating," said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary. "We need to remain as engaged as ever, if not more so because we are at a crucial point in this war."

Even before Gen. McChrystal's ouster, senior defense officials had been contemplating an overhaul of their communications strategy to get top officers in the war zone to brief reporters more frequently, a strategy regularly employed during the Iraq surge three years ago. Defense officials described the effort as an attempt to keep Washington-based reporters regularly informed of operations in Afghanistan amid concerns that news coverage was increasingly providing narrowly focused snapshots of insurgent violence in southern Afghanistan...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

Topics include:

1) Petraeus's burden

2) Expecting the unexpected

Petraeus's burden

Gen. David Petraeus now has the unenviable task of salvaging the campaign in Afghanistan. In his announcement of Petraeus's transfer, U.S. President Barack Obama stated that there will be no change in the campaign's strategy. With the president reaffirming his administration's analysis of the situation and its strategy for solving the problem, the implication is that success will come with continuity in management, better cooperation among the players, and more resources.

Afghanistan is becoming a deepening vortex for both the United States military and for the country's national security policies. In addition to the financial and human toll (80 ISAF soldiers have died so far this month), Afghanistan is imposing other costs on the U.S. military, on U.S. defense planning, and on America's diplomatic leverage around the world. When assessing the benefits to be achieved by the Afghan campaign, these costs also merit consideration.

The administration and its military advisers have chosen a manpower-intensive counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and a long list of officials have expressed their concerns about the implications of repeated deployments for the all-volunteer force. Afghanistan also seems to chew up generals. Gen. David McKiernan was replaced out of frustration with a lack of progress. The same frustration, expressing itself in behind-the-scenes contempt and bickering, brought down Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Now Petraeus has been recalled from a depleted bench. This move has its price. After jumping into the Afghan vortex, Petraeus will leave behind his critical duties at Central Command, which include diplomacy across the Middle East and Central Asia, the containment of Iran, and supervising the endgame in Iraq. The administration has yet to announce who, if anyone, will replace Petraeus at Centcom.

The Afghan vortex has implications for defense planning elsewhere in the world. In a speech he delivered to the Navy League in May, Gates said that the costs of rehabilitating the Army and Marine Corps, combined with the ground force's long term manpower and family support costs, will mean that the Navy will see no increases in its budget. The secretary general of Japan's ruling party recently argued that U.S. naval power is in decline and that Japan needs to adjust its maritime security policy accordingly. When that view spreads throughout Asia, an arms race will be inevitable.

The deepening commitment has forced the U.S. government into the position of pleading for favors from Pakistan and Russia in order to open new supply lines to the growing army in Afghanistan. The price has been to forfeit diplomatic leverage with implications for U.S. relations in Europe, India, and China.

Are the campaign objectives in Afghanistan worth all of these costs? Evidently, Obama has decided that they are. A smaller commitment to Afghanistan would presumably reduce or eliminate the costs described above. But such a course would have its own risks, which Obama has presumably considered and rejected.

Regrettably, the United States may yet end up with the worst of both worlds, namely all of the costs and few of the campaign's expected payoffs. The campaign aims to deny al Qaeda a safe haven in Afghanistan. With its focus on population protection, the coalition has withdrawn from large portions of Afghan territory including along the Pakistan border, ceding these areas to anyone who can establish control. The campaign aims to reverse the Taliban's momentum. But with sanctuaries along both sides of the border, the Taliban has the freedom to regulate its momentum as it sees fit.

This is the burden Petraeus has assumed. The costs stretch across the world and the United States will be paying them for years to come.

Expecting the unexpected

For nearly a decade the United States has suffered the consequences of strategic surprise. Prior to Sept. 2001, the country's level of effort against global terrorism matched what at the time was perceived to be its relatively low and infrequent cost. The scale of the 9/11 attack was a strategic surprise. With broad support, George W. Bush's administration scrambled to devise a reciprocal response, the consequences of which we are still experiencing. Similarly, the U.S. military did not anticipate the requirement for large, manpower-intensive counterinsurgency and stabilization campaigns. Another strategic surprise with costly and enduring consequences.

Is there any way to avoid strategic surprise? Three U.S. government policy planners and two outside experts recently discussed the issue at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Their conclusion? The government cannot avoid surprise. The best it can do is to become more resilient to the consequences.

If we could make better forecasts about the future, we could prepare for it. When it comes to national security planning, a forecasting approach is self-defeating. Defending against adversaries and projecting influence in the world are competitive games with all sides endlessly responding to their opponent's moves. Viewed from this perspective, it should not be a surprise that the U.S. military now finds itself fighting the kind of war for which it was least prepared -- clever adversaries responded to a vulnerability U.S. planners had left open.

The solution to this dilemma is for U.S. military planners to strive for balance and to assemble a widely diversified portfolio of military capabilities. Unfortunately, this approach will by definition be wasteful. Most of the expensive capabilities in a diversified portfolio will never be used. It is true that these unused capabilities will have deterred attacks adversaries may have otherwise contemplated. But it will still be painful to watch expensive investments making no contribution to a particular type of conflict, as occurs now.

Institutional culture also determines success or failure at coping with strategic surprise. Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently wondered what purpose the Marine Corps will serve in the future. Where is the efficiency in having a second land army? Bureaucratic competition, inter-service rivalry, and redundant capabilities are wasteful. But having a diversity of capabilities, even if seemingly redundant, hedges against strategic surprise.

In spite of Gates's call for balance in defense planning, the Pentagon cannot affordably prepare for every contingency. And in spite of the perils of forecasting, defense planners will have to make some educated guesses about the most dangerous future threats and then prepare for them. That will mean taking risks on other flanks, to which adversaries will respond. Surprise may be inevitable. But military planners can prepare by creating a force that has adaptability built into its design.

Well,

we'll certainly be

celebrating this 4th of July. But it doesn't look like we'll be high-fiving

and declaring success on our June fundraising campaign.  We didn't naively expect

that a slap-dash "send money" blog post would solve all our ills.  But we were

briefly teased by a strong start, a few $500 contributions, and a $1000 day early

on.  Reality sets in - we've had a few $10 average/day doldrums, and we are plodding inexorably

toward coming in at <20% of goal. Thanks very much to those of you have supported us at any level. Are there more of you?

If you value Small Wars Journal and are in a position to help us out financially,

please do so now via all those convenient 21st century ways to throw money at us.

Also see our Support page

for other ways to help.

So we've got some fundraising work ahead of us, and it is time and resource consuming

work that draws away from content work, but we will press on. Strong public support

is a nice thing to be able to point to as we drive forward on corporate, grant,

and foundation support -- all of which is in the game plan. We had hoped to dive

into that with a bigger feather in our cap by being able to point to a broad public

support base on top of all the technical and content work we'll consummate ASAP. 

Please don't discount the value, in both $$ and solidarity, of your small contributions.

Campaign status:

See this

SWJ Blog post for more on the kick-off of our June campaign, all of

these posts

for our nagging along the way, and our

Support page for other ways

to support Small Wars Journal.

Please note:  we aren't very efficiently automated, so we produce the

$upporter$ certificates every week or two in a batch. We will turn to on Author's Certificates soon-ish, too, remedially back to 2005.

Lost in the furor over the disgraced Gen. Stanley McChrystal is this simple truth: The counterinsurgency strategy championed by his successor, Gen. David Petraeus, works.

Awaiting his confirmation by the Senate early next week as the new commander in Afghanistan, Petraeus is assembling his war staff and planning how to tackle his biggest and most immediate problems: the stalled offensive in Kandahar, the lackluster performance of the Afghan army and police, and the ragged relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

As chief architect of the counterinsurgency strategy he implemented in Iraq and which McChrystal adapted to Afghanistan a year ago, Petraeus knows that aggressively combining security with appropriate political and economic action - with a good dollop of humility that puts the Afghans in charge - is a long-term but sure road to success. In short, as many soldiers in Afghanistan have shown me, the strategy works. But it takes time and patience...

More at Politics Daily.

The firing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal has ended the career of an outstanding military leader and the only American to forge a close relationship in recent years with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. It has disrupted the war when the U.S. executive branch and Congress crave signs of immediate progress.

It has also brought in a new commander, Gen. David Petraeus, who has a great record and the public-relations savvy his predecessor lacked. Those assets, together with the urgency this crisis has given to longstanding problems, afford the new commander hitherto unavailable opportunities.

For one thing, the change may facilitate the appointment of an American ambassador who shares the strategic views of the military commander. Karl Eikenberry's differences with Gen. McChrystal—and with Gen. Petraeus, who was on the same page as Gen. McChrystal—undermined efforts to organize militias and co-opt insurgents. Mr. Eikenberry's contempt for Mr. Karzai has prevented him from accomplishing his most important mission—influencing the chief of state...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

... This is not a vote of no-confidence in Gen. David H. Petraeus, whom the president has selected to lead the U.S. effort in Afghanistan, replacing the disgraced Gen. Stanley A McChrystal. It is a simple recognition that the conditions Petraeus enjoyed in Iraq are far from present in Afghanistan, and that the key skills he brought to bear in the first war won't help him as much in the second.

What allowed Petraeus to succeed in Iraq was not the troop surge itself; after all, a city as big and sprawling as Baghdad, with 5 million people living in two- and three-story homes, can swallow 30,000 troops without a burp. Nor was it his development of a counterinsurgency doctrine for the Army. The key tenets -- such as focusing on protecting the population, while still going after the diehard insurgents, and splitting rather than uniting the enemy -- were familiar stuff to anyone who had read the books. It seemed novel only in the context of Iraq, where for many years the American commanders had terrified families by knocking down doors in the middle of the night, treating locals not as the prize to be won but as the playing field on which they confronted the insurgents.

Rather, Petraeus's critical contribution in Iraq was one of leadership: He got everyone on the same page. Until he arrived, there often seemed to be dozens of wars going on, with every brigade commander trying to figure out the strategic goals of a campaign. Before Petraeus arrived, the top priority for U.S. forces was getting out. After he took over, the No. 1 task for U.S. troops, explicitly listed in the mission statement he issued, was to protect the Iraqi people...

More at The Washington Post.

By Jim Garamone

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, June 24, 2010 -- President Barack Obama's nominee for the top U.S. Joint Forces Command post said today he will utilize the lessons he has learned during three combat command tours in Iraq if he is confirmed to lead the nation's joint force provider.

During his confirmation hearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee, Army Gen. Raymond T. Odierno explained the approach he would take at the Norfolk, Va.-based command.

Odierno, commander of U.S. Forces Iraq, also has served as commander Multinational Corps Iraq and was the commander of the 4th Infantry Division during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"My first priority will be to support all of our combatant commanders and prepare our U.S. joint interagency team to meet the needs of this evolutionary and complex environment in which we must continue to operate, and not only operate, but succeed," the general said. "I will never forget my responsibilities to ensure our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, as well as our dedicated families, are prepared and ready to take on all of the challenges ahead."

Odierno took time to brief the committee on the situation in Iraq, saying he is encouraged by the progress there. Iraq held national elections in March and sat its new parliament earlier this month. The process of forming a new government proceeds slowly, Odierno said, but is proceeding.

"We are working closely with Iraqi partners to enable a process that yields an inclusive governing body that is representative of the diversity of the nation and the results of the elections," he said.

Terrorists continue to launch sporadic attacks in Iraq, but the overall decline in attacks continues. The number of civilian casualties also continues to decline, as well as the number of high-profile attacks.

All of this is happening as the number of U.S. personnel in Iraq is dropping and the mission is changing. Since June 30, 2009, the Iraqi security forces have assumed full responsibility for planning and executing security operations in their country.

"Working closely with the [U.S. Central Command] commander, secretary of defense and the president of the United States, we have developed a roadmap for the future of Iraq and our mission there," Odierno said.

Some 84,000 U.S. servicemembers are based in Iraq, down from 165,000 at the height of the surge in 2008. That number will drop to 50,000 by the end of August as part of the U.S.-Iraq security agreement. The American troops remaining will transition to an "advise and assist" role for Iraqi security forces. All U.S. troops will be out of the country by the end of 2011, according to the agreement.

"As we transition to a civilian-led presence, we will continue to conduct partnered counterterrorism operations and provide combat enablers to help the Iraqi security forces maintain pressure on the extremist networks," Odierno said. "But our primary mission will be to train, advise [and] assist the Iraqi security forces to protect the population against internal and external threats."

U.S. Forces Iraq will continue to support the U.S. embassy, the provincial reconstruction teams, the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations dedicated to building Iraqi governmental capacity, the general noted.

Odierno praised the efforts of U.S. servicemembers in all phases of warfare.

"In a complex and ever-changing operating environment, our servicemembers have displayed unparalleled adaptability and ingenuity to work through the toughest issues," the general said.

"If confirmed," he continued, "I'm committed to applying the lessons I've learned in almost five years as a division, corps, and force commander inside of Iraq. I will dedicate myself to ensure that, in my duties as the commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command, I plan to use that experience to develop our joint doctrine and capabilities, evolve our professional military education and support our servicemembers currently deployed around the world."

The armed services committee must vote on the nomination and, if approved, the full Senate must confirm the appointment. Odierno would replace Marine Corps Gen. James N. Mattis at the command.